Category: default || By jt3y

True story: Not long ago, on a warm Friday night, I was standing on Walnut Street in Our Fair City, chatting with some people, when I saw two children approaching with a dog.

The closer they got, I realized that the distance had caused me to badly misjudge the perspective --- the two people were adult-sized, but the dog was massive.

As they got near us, I realized it was a wolf-dog hybrid, but frankly, it looked like a full-bred wolf. They were walking it on what looked like a tow chain. The "dog" looked like he outweighed his "master" by 50 pounds.

I tend to like dogs, so I took a deep breath, and said "Hi, pooch!" and I said good evening to them, and something about the dog taking them for a walk, and they laughed, and the wolf-dog just looked as happy as could be, tongue out, giant tail wagging. His paws were bigger than my head.

Luckily, wolves can smell fear, because that smell covered up the fact that I had just evacuated my bowels.

This came back to me when news reports broke this week that a woman near Export had been mauled by a pack of wolf-dogs she bred.

According to a story by my old Trib colleagues Paul Peirce, Jen Reeger and Liz Zemba, a humane officer had repeatedly warned the victim of the dangers --- wolves in the wild rarely attack humans, because they're afraid of them, but wolves raised in captivity have no such fear.

Local animal shelters say they don't put wolf-dog puppies (cubs?) up for adoption because they're too aggressive; they're euthanized instead. The animals that mauled the woman in this case were tranquilized and then destroyed by state troopers.

This is at least the second time locally in recent memory that we've had an exotic animal kill its owners. A python killed a young girl in Irwin a few years ago.

The people who adopt exotic animals typically do so because they think the animals are beautiful or majestic, and because they're fascinated with them. The Trib story, indeed, notes that the victim was part native American and considered raising the wolves "part of her ethnic background."

(I understand what this means, but I don't think native peoples actually raised wolves; I think the wolves kind of raised themselves.)

Anyway, I'm not going to judge anyone else's choice of pet. But if you love an exotic animal that much, why would you want to trap it?

It's one thing to keep a domestic dog or cat, conditioned by thousands of years of breeding to want to live with humans. It's a whole different matter to coop up a wolf in the backyard of a city house --- or even in a pen out in the country --- where it can't roam around freely.

I have no doubt that many of the people who care for these exotic animals are dedicated pet owners --- the fact that they put up with great inconveniences and expenses to keep them as pets leads me to suspect they may be considerably more dedicated than the average dog or cat owner. (The woman who was caring for these wolf-dogs was collecting roadkill to feed them --- that's a bit more difficult than buying a bag of Purina Chow at Shop 'n Save every week.)

But never mind the fact that keeping a wild animal is dangerous --- it still seems a little bit cruel, even if the animals (like the wolf-dog I saw) seem happy.

So, why do people keep wolves or other "wild" animals as pets? I'm open to explanations and theories.

. . .

Around the Town: Summer is a great time to be a car buff in the Mon-Yough area.

I saw a black 1960 Studebaker Hawk on River Road in Liberty Borough the other night. Not five minutes later on Romine Avenue in Port Vue, someone went past me in a white drop-trop 1968 Oldsmobile 4-4-2. (And not a minute after that, the Port Vue squad car peeled out behind it with its lights on. I didn't stop to see who the cop was after.)

I know we're stuck in the past, but spotting two rarities on a weeknight when there's no car show around was unusual even for us, and it put a smile on my face.

On the other hand, a local restaurant has just started having a "car cruise" in their parking lot each week. It seems like every other restaurant in town has a weekly "car cruise," and I don't think the public was clamoring for another one.

In fact, we may be at the limit of the number of car cruises that the Mon-Yough area can support --- I drove past this week during this place's "car cruise" and there were four (count 'em) cars, total. That's not a car cruise --- that's a group of people out for lunch.

By the way: I stumbled on this while looking for something else --- you can watch vintage commercials for Oldsmobile muscle cars at this website. (Click on the car images; you'll need to have Flash installed. I love the one of the guy doing doughnuts on a beach in a 4-4-2. It's so politically incorrect and also so quintessentially a Madison Avenue product of the early '60s, when cool guys had short, Brylcreemed hair and wore preppy clothes and shades while listening to bongo drums.)

. . .

Questions For Class Discussion: Can it really be considered a "car cruise" when the cars are stationary? And would allowing wolves to roam at will through a car cruise make it more exciting? If so, should the wolves wear preppy clothes and shades? Explain your answers.